


Tonight's Not Long Enough

by DWEmma



Category: Nashville (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:04:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam, experiencing jetlag in the middle of the night while coming to work with a new band, notices a google alert for a video of Scarlett taking the stage at Winterfest. And he never did get around to getting rid of her phone number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight's Not Long Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



“Whether I say the things I say  
Or whether I just turn the knob  
I give voice to them anyway  
And either way I’ve done my job

Cuz the world doesn’t need another voice  
Someone else will always talk talk  
The world doesn’t need another voice...”  
Liam McGuinnis

Liam woke up on a couch in a recording studio. It took him a moment to figure out what country he was in, much less the time zone or time. He looked at his phone, not trusting his memory. 1:03 AM, Montreal. He remembered flying in from Russia the night before, and not knowing exactly where he was being put up in this city, just heading to the studio, hoping that no one else had the idea to use it as temporary lodging. He did some tangled math in his head and figured it was about 9 AM in St. Petersburg, not that he had been keeping anything that resembled a proper day/night schedule working with that last band. Their tenuous grasp of English wasn’t as barring to communication as their tenuous grasp of days and nights. Sometimes they’d be up for recording for 36 hours straight, only to not show up for over 48 hours, and showing up at 10 PM then. But they had been paying him for his time as well as for his effort. And he knows he put together a great album. Maybe if they’d had a few more days they could have redone that guitar solo on track 8...he shook out his head, trying not to think about things that didn’t matter. Onto the next project. The Ash Wednesday Hangovers should be in the studio in the morning, and he can start up again. 

Or at least, onto finding something to do before the rest of Quebec decided to wake up. Liam opened his email and scanned what had come in since he fell asleep. He wouldn’t want to admit it to anyone, but he might have set up a google alert for Scarlett O’Connor after that incident where she collapsed on stage while opening up for the devil pop princess, and then disappeared. It’s not that Liam thought that it was his fault exactly, but maybe if he’d just let her sing about being a whiskey drinking flirting country girl she wouldn’t have gone so dark on stage. If he’d left that journal alone and never made her record that song about her mom, that gorgeous heartbreaking song that needed to exist within the universe and that he was able to pull out of her through force and will, if he had left it alone...

Or maybe if he hadn’t given her those pills. Logically in hindsight he realizes that the famous alcoholic in her close family should have been a tip that she couldn’t handle substances, but he was just trying to get that album out of her, that album that he was booted off from, that album she never completed without him.

Usually if there were any alerts, it would be something about an artist wanting to record one of her songs, which always made him happy. That girl could write. But today there was a little bit more. He clicked on a YouTube listing for some unsteady cellphone shot from Winterfest in East Nashville. She was up there with some band called ZAG, looking nervous but elated singing female lead on some song called “Borrow My Heart.” It didn’t sound like something she would write. It was more in the Americana vein, three vocals all doing harmonies with a danceable feel to it. But there Scarlett was, in front of an audience of at least a thousand, performing. 

And she looked fantastic. She had her wavy blond hair falling down, and a long sleeved white lace dress that made her look like a country princess from the 1960s. Not that he was into that thing, but it worked for her. He could imagine all the hipsters in the audience going out and trying to find a dress like that in the future. 

And that voice. He’d never heard her blend with anyone before. At least, not with that much confidence. He’d heard her with backup singers, and he’d heard some fuzzy recording from the Bluebird of when she’d first sung with Gunnar. She didn’t know he’d heard this, but he wanted to know where her writing had come from as a way of getting more out of her. And it had come from sex. That’s why he wasn’t worried about messing to her album by letting nature take its course. What he doesn’t explain to Rayna was that he was doing his job. He was making Scarlett touch her emotions by bringing them all up to the raw physical surface. But how do you tell the most famous woman to ever reject you that sex is often part of your process when working with female artists? 

After the first song was over, she seemed so relieved. The look on her face made him miss her. Honestly, he hadn’t put much thought into her since leaving for the airport, leaving her in tears. He couldn’t afford the thought. He got on the plane, took a fistful of Xanax, and when he woke up in Japan, he got to work. But everything he had pushed down about her eight, nine months ago poured out watching this video. 

They then started up with a song called “I Ain’t Leavin’ Without Your Love.” Okay, what was with those damn country people and writing songs that used pretend words and dropped gs? Liam sighed, but the song begun with Scarlett soloing...it was another song that he didn’t see her in, and it was obvious now that she was stepping in for someone else, but she owned those songs like she was there for their inception. They were joyous in a way that Scarlett actually probably could be. They weren’t the silly Whiskey Drinking sort of joy that she thought she had to fake. It was the same real and close to the surface emotions, but just more shallow than what Scarlett wrote herself. But maybe that was good. Maybe coming back with material that didn’t make her confront her demons every time she played them would be good for her. He didn’t regret a moment of getting “Black Roses” down in the studio. But he regretted that she had to play it every night in front of an audience. 

But this music...he looked at the time again. 1:23 in Montreal. That would make it only 12:23 in Nashville. He knew from those same google alerts that Rayna had released Scarlett from her contract. Knowing Rayna, she did it for Scarlett’s own good without Scarlett’s full permission. No, that was mean. He didn’t need to be mean. It was probably was for Scarlett’s own good. But Rayna didn’t own Scarlett any more. Rayna owned the devil pop princess, a pregnant devil pop princess at that, so any promises he had made to her regarding Scarlett were nothing any more. Did he even still have her number? He scrolled through his phone. No. He had deleted it in a fit of purging. He put down his phone and almost went back to see if there was any more footage from the concert a few hours earlier when he remembered a haze of airplane Xanax causing him to screencap her contact information in case he ever needed it again. He was protecting himself from himself while in the act of protecting himself from himself. He scrolled through the pictures, memorized the number, and dialed the unfamiliar 662 Area Code. 

It rang a few times. He was about to hang up when he heard her soft pixie Mississippi twang breathlessly say hello. He almost still hung up, but he was sure she hadn’t deleted his number from her phone. She didn’t need to delete numbers to keep herself from calling them. Not that she would want to call him after the way he had treated her. 

“Liam?” she asked, proving his theory perfectly. He still didn’t know what to say. “If you’re going to just be there breathing on the other side of the line like a serial killer, I’m going to hang up.” He opened his mouth, but still nothing came out. Who was he? It had to be the time zone switching. He was never good at mornings, especially when they fell in the middle of the night. “Well it’s been real nice talking to you, but I gotta-” 

“Hey Scarlett,” he said. His voice sounded funny and where was his normal swagger? This was coming out all wrong. 

“Hey Liam,” she sounded less annoyed and a little amused. “Is there a reason for this call or did you just butt dial me or something?” 

“I just saw you perform. You were amazing,” he finally got out. 

Scarlett sounded confused. “Are you in Nashville? Where are you?” 

“No, I’ve just gotten to Montreal. There’s a band...anyhow, someone uploaded a video of it to YouTube....” He let that idea drift out, realizing that there was no good way to explain the google alert that would give him any semblance of power in this conversation at all. Why did he call her? 

“And you just happened upon it?” Scarlett sounded suspicious. She had sounded so happy when she first answered. She’d had such a great night and he was ruining it. 

He realized the only way out of this one was with honesty. “I have a google alert for you. And before you say that sounds creepy, hear me out. I feel guilty for what happened to you. I think that if I’d never stolen your journal, if I never made you write something so terribly personal, you’d be a country superstar by now. If I’d let you open up on your own terms...so anyhow, I have an alert to keep an eye for when you came back. Not so that I could stop feeling guilty but so I can see what you create next. So I saw it. Are you in a new band...?”

“My friend, well she was my best friend and then she wasn’t my friend at all and then we were friends again...and now after tonight I’m sure she hates me again, but she bailed on the show at the last minute. I knew all the words...” She trailed off. He could tell that there was so much more to the story than he could possibly guess. But he knew what pushing got him last time. Well it got him everything, but at a cost to her. If she wanted to tell him something, she would. 

“You sounded amazing. And you were having so much fun up there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you having so much fun.”

“Well there was a whole thing in between where I wasn’t having much fun at all...” she trailed off and started again. “But I guess all that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re right. Tonight was a whole lot of fun. Started out with some total moments of PTSD, don’t know if that showed up on YouTube-” 

“No. All I saw was you in a white dress jumping up and down and singing your face off,” he said. He couldn’t believe she was still talking to him, but she was. 

“Well that’s good then, since there was a moment where I wanted to run far far away. But I didn’t. The first time I got up in front of people and sang I was drunk off my behind. Did you know that?” She didn’t sound guarded any more. 

“I think you told me that, that night when we drank and looked at my music,” he said. In fact, he remembered the story well, but wanted her to tell it again. 

“Well the bar band was playing June Carter Cash version of Ring of Fire, and my drunk self exclaimed how much I loved the song, and they practically dragged me up there and made me sing it. And it felt so damn good. I’d probably still be a waitress if I hadn’t gotten drunk that one night, if Gunnar hadn’t forced me out that night...” Her voice petered out again. “I think somewhere abouts I forgot that it was fun. I mean, I hadn’t stopped writing. My publisher even gives me a writing room when I want it, with a piano in it. But I forgot how fun it is to perform, even songs I didn’t write.” 

“So what’s next? Is this your new band?” Liam asked. 

“I...I don’t know. It went fine tonight, but I don’t want to commit to something if it turns out I can’t do it again. And touring with your two ex-boyfriends sounds like a bad idea.” 

“You dated both of them?” Liam smiled. Suddenly he felt less guilty about pulling an innocent young girl into sexual temptation like Rayna had made him feel like he’d done. 

“Well Avery was the boy that I followed to Nashville in the first place. And Gunnar was the one who got me singing...and yeah, I’ve dated both of them. Avery’s obviously with...or not with...well whatever the baby daddy to Juliette Barnes’ child, and Gunnar was dating the woman who bailed on the gig at the last minute...can’t help but think that we’d all be more successful in this business if we kept it in our pants a bit more.” She paused, as if to catch herself before he realized that what’s she’d said could apply to him, too. Then she continued. “But then what would we write songs about?” 

“What indeed,” Liam sighed. It had been a while since he’d showed Scarlett those lyrics. And longer since he’d looked at them himself. 

“Hey Liam?” Scarlett broke into his thoughts.

“Yeah?” Liam focused on her again. 

“Why’d you really call? I know that you said you’d seen the video, and that’s great and all, but you could have just watched it and not called. Why’d you call?” 

He smiled at himself. He wished he’d face-timed her. He always forgot about new technology when it would have been really helpful to use. He wished he could see her face right now. But changing it over would be awkward, now. 

“Liam?” He had paused too long again. 

“I wanted to really know that you’re okay,” he said, lamely. 

“Oh,” she said, flatly. Had she been expecting something better? Had he insulted her? “I’m fine. Really.” 

“I can tell,” he said, his voice cracking in an annoying way. “I’m glad.” 

She still sounded confused and a little put off by how recalcitrant he was being with her. “Well I’m gonna go now. It was real nice to talk to you.” It was like the floodgates had come back closed on her. She had given him a chance to say...something, and he had no idea what to say to keep her open to him, to keep her receptive. And he had screwed it up, again. 

“Scarlett?” he asked, hoping something would come out that would fix this again. 

“Yeah?” she asked, in an annoyingly neutral voice. 

“It was really great to hear your voice,” he said, with as much openness as he could without his voice cracking again. “I’m going to keep that google alert. I don’t care that it sounds creepy when I admit that I set it up.” 

“Okay,” she said. He still couldn’t read her. He was about to hang up when she quickly said, “I’ve got one, too.” 

“One what?” he asked.

“A google alert. For you. The Ash Wednesday Hangovers are lucky to be working with you.” And she hung up. 

Liam scrolled his brain to think whether he had mentioned the name of the band, the reason he was in Montreal, but he didn’t think he did. She had offered that bit of knowledge up, giving up all the power she had between them, letting him know that she’s keeping electronic tabs on him as well. 

He popped a Xanax and lay back down on the couch, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep, knowing that today would be far too long if he didn’t at least try. He didn’t regret screencapping her phone number. Not one little bit.


End file.
